This poem comes from Frank's Hopwood manuscript, compiled in a roominghouse in Ann Arbor during the winter of 1950-1951. The Avery Hopwood awards offered a tiny cash enticement to writers at a time when the entire idea of "creative writing" (and of cash prizes for its accomplishment) still lay blissfully unhatched, as when the Alien lay slumbering in its subterranean pod. The cash prize a small withered carrot dangling from the end of the short sharp stick of a harsh frostbound Ann Arbor winter. A few years later the same dubious enticement drew me also. A few years later still -- by now Frank was dead, run down at 39 by a dune buggy on Fire Island -- I visited Ann Arbor in the winter
permafrost with Ted Berrigan, who insisted on being ushered to the
sacred site of Frank's temporary residence. We labored up the hill
through the hard ungiving elements, nostrils frozen together, small puffs of breath poking the frigid air out ahead of us, Ted growing less committed to the quest with each tentative step into the deep snow covering what was assumed to be sidewalk. We arrived, had a look -- an ordinary drab Midwestern roominghouse, no distinguishing features. The last leaf of autumn long since withered and gone.

Thanks all, on a day more than full of winter it is gladdening to hear I am not alone in seeing this poem as a small herald to hark the arrival of a genius. Particularly the tonal command, the trick of assimilating and incorporating a certain French style into the unique American wit -- and the delicate, only half-ironic wistfulness, and the romance, and of course the sense of humour.

In lines 7-8, the mastery is already evident. And in the poem of an M.A. candidate, yet! (Ann Arbor does have its autumnal beauties, before the ice storms set in.)

And re. the Hopwoods -- over the infinite years there have obviously been many (if not myriad) winners in the various categories. The Hopwood website keeps the whole list updated, I believe, if you can bother to fiddle with the requisite PDF'ing.

Yes and Oh for the bright unapologetic times and tones evoked by the memoria of all that gone joy and gladness (not to mention the gentle pre-technological sadness), buried now under the endless snows of yesteryear, upon which cascade the black deluges of right now.

All my sad old man's clothes draped over a rickety plastic drying rack, dripping with the bathos.

Kent, My landlord on E. Ann St. in A2 had inherited and helpfully passed along lurid family tales concerning epic filial trauma skeletons rattling in the Roethke greenhouse closet, and these were compounded by the then current academic poet gossip concerning Teddy's amazing then-present-tense bad behaviour, reportedly permitted, even indeed possibly egged-on, by his astonishingly broadminded depot chair at U-Dub, so that...

How many of those weird memories could it take to squeeze under one sweater at the soda fountain counter at Schwab's?

Academic poetry then and now, enough to cause one to wish to dive under that capacious sweater and never again come out...

Against that background, then, Frank, staying on his feet even when the deck pitched... until he didn't:

Lana Turner has collapsed!I was trotting along and suddenlyit started raining and snowingand you said it was hailingbut hailing hits you on the headhard so it was really snowing andraining and I was in such a hurryto meet you but the trafficwas acting exactly like the skyand suddenly I see a headlineLANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!there is no snow in Hollywoodthere is no rain in CaliforniaI have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up

(The Old Masters, they were always wrong about the rain in California.)

Thanks TC. Someday somehow I'll pass along my series of powerpoint "plays" inspired by Bruce's comment (yes, Teddy does get to wear the sweater) but more significantly driven by hero-worship and my extreme case of HOPPY ENVY.